After four years of campaigning, the words “Living Wage” will echo through the chambers of at least six councils across Aotearoa and at least one council is poised to become an accredited Living Wage Employer: Wellington City Council. That advance is a victory for community organising and for the power of the unexpected – the uniting of diverse communities in common purpose: a Living Wage that enables workers and their families to live basic yet decent lives.

When an Auckland mayoral candidate asked the packed People’s Assembly at St Matthews-in-the-City to “put your hands up if you own a house” and only a handful did, the candidates knew that this was not the usual political meeting. This meeting was filled with workers earning less than a Living Wage. When the mayoral office cleaner, Malia Lagi, told that crowd about working 70 hours a week and struggling to hire a musical instrument, which was a life line for her son who had a head injury, there was barely a dry eye in the room.

The focus of the Assembly was on low paid workers and not the candidates. The candidates were there to listen and commit to what the citizens were demanding, rather than the candidates occupying the meeting with their platforms while the citizens asked polite questions. So, that was not the usual political meeting either. Our citizens put their demands up front and secured commitments to a Living Wage – and we now have a council majority.

Three years post the first Living Wage victory in the 2013 Wellington City Council elections, we know the hard work in Auckland has just begun. It is a good sign that Mayor Phil Goff has already met with the Living Wage Movement and a date is set down before Christmas to begin the conversation about an advisory group that will oversee implementation of a Living Wage for the Auckland Council and its CCOs.

It took a Herculean effort to get the first appointment with the previous mayor, Len Brown, and he never took his promises on the Living Wage seriously. As mayoral candidate, Phil Goff told the People’s Assembly he liked to under promise and over deliver: we hope so. Now successfully ensconced as Mayor of Auckland, Phil Goff has reiterated that directly employed workers come first in receiving a minimum of the Living Wage and after that consideration will be given to the contracted staff. He has costed the promise to deliver for council employees at about $9million – a drop in the bucket of a multi-billion dollar business and probably an over-estimate.

It is our job to ensure the discussion about the contracted workers, like Malia, is not relegated to another election campaign. Failure to begin the procurement conversation sends a message that these workers are not valued and it is okay to incentivise further contracting out. Paying directly employed workers, like library assistants, a Living Wage should not result in further privatization to reduce costs. The campaign for the Living Wage fuses together the destiny of directly employed and contracted workers to ensure solving one problem does not generate another.

An early vote by the new Auckland Council Governing Body, by 14 to 7, to oppose the Government’s offshore oil drilling agenda may also be a good sign for us. It was described as “historic and decisive” by Steve Abel of Greenpeace, who also said it would be an “insult to democracy” if the Government didn’t pay attention to the vote. We now expect the same vote of councillors to implement a Living Wage. After all it is our current free market that wages war on both the environment and people and many have argued that environmental degradation is a side effect of inequality. If councillors don’t like the argument that they should support the Living Wage to raise council workers out of poverty, they could vote for the Living Wage to reduce inequality as part of a commitment to a more sustainable future for the city and the planet.

Evidence suggests inequality has a negative impact on the environment because, for example, the rich consume more, skew public policy in their favour and often invest their surplus in ways that degrade the environment. Further, the breakdown of trust and common purpose that accompanies inequality hinders the collective effort required to protect what we share in common, such as the environment.

The Living Wage Movement knows we need strong institutions of civil society if we are to successfully challenge poor decisions, rectify failures of governance, reduce inequality and improve environmental sustainability. Our Movement has united faith, union and community groups at local government elections and delivered majority support on the Auckland Council for the Living Wage. But far from being a simple majority, the next vote should be 14/7 in favour because, if those councillors that voted against drilling are serious about supporting the environment, they need to address the inequality within their own organisation, cultivate a moral responsibility for the residents of the city over which they govern, and pay a Living Wage to employees and contracted workers.

The underwear manufacturer has a much bigger secret, a real secret: they’re hiding workers. International Trade Union Confederation President, Sharon Burrows, says 97% of the workers are invisible, not directly employed but scattered through the global supply chain, where the company can pretend these workers are not its responsibility.

The 2016 Ethical Fashion Guide, produced by Baptist World Aid Australia, gave Victoria’s Secret (a chain of lingerie shops) a ranking of D+ for the observance of international labour rights. There are numerous media and research reports that Victoria’s Secret sources its cotton from companies, such as one based in Jordan, which uses child labour.

Goods are often produced far from their point of sale, changing hands along a complex and opaque supply chain from the raw material to manufacturing and distribution companies before they finally get to the consumer. Like a game of pass the parcel, responsibility for the product rests fleetingly in the hands of those it passes through, many of whom will be oblivious to the gem contained within, its component parts, or who else was in the game. Of course someone designed the game and they know everything – but they’re hanging on to their secret.

Services are the same and we are drowning in examples of businesses, both public and private, that know full well that they are responsible for the lives of workers they contract to clean our buildings, remove our waste, and secure our banks – but they aren’t admitting it. Or put it this way, if they don’t know about the service supply chain they shouldn’t be allowed to govern or manage the business because the consequences of their actions are so severe; the game they control destroys lives, cripples communities, and creates the kind of society no one with an ounce of respect for democracy and fairness really wants to see. Take Agnes, who cleans for Auckland Council:

“I’ve got three jobs. I work as a cleaner and I work 68 hours a week….I’ve got four grandchildren now and it’s a blessing for me. I need to see them and given them money for their school, to pay their fees. I need a life, I don’t have a life. I only work and go to sleep and get up and go to work. I get $15.25 an hour and if I had a Living Wage it would be good for me, to live a better life.”

Agnes spoke to the West Auckland People’s Assembly recently at which a group of candidates for Council were asked to commit to ensuring a Living Wage for directly employed and contracted workers at Auckland Council. Penny Hulse and Greg Presland said “yes.” Current Councillor, Linda Cooper, said “no.” In fact she said: “I don’t support forcing other organisations to do that.”

Yet setting minimum acceptable terms for tenders is precisely what councils do and that is precisely what Linda Cooper should do if she is interested in her public institution operating in an ethical way. This is what public body leaders and managers should do because not only do they represent us, the people, but they are the only ones that can effect change for workers, like Agnes. Her contractor/employer is in a competitive tendering situation and is in no position to sustain wage increases if the funder, the Council, doesn’t pay them to do that. Only the Council can create a level playing field for the tendering of services and that tendering should be on quality of delivery and not on how little the wages will cost.

The Living Wage Movement is calling on candidates for councils in Auckland, Wellington and some other centres to pay no less than a Living Wage to their directly employed staff and to contracted workers delivering services on a regular and ongoing basis. This amount of money calculated annually by the Anglican Family Centre Social Policy Research Unit is the amount necessary to survive and participate in society.

It is also significant in the light of recent research by Massey University’s MPOWER group, which has identified in its longitudinal research on the Living Wage that the household income range of $30-$39,000 is where people perceive a move from ‘survival’ to a ‘decent’ income. There is an impact of income on the choices workers are able to make and therefore on their well-being and development.

Council cleaners on the minimum wage, around $31,000p/a (full time), are robbed of the choices critical for well-being, such as the choice Agnes might make to spend time she doesn’t currently have, with her grandchildren. The Massey research suggests that a Living Wage of around $41,000 provides a significant shift in well-being for all our low paid workers. Most of us would say that those workers who work hard keeping our cities clean, safe and secure, deserve this.

We can take action against the tales of child slavery in the supply chain of Victoria’s Secret by not buying its underwear. We can stop the game, unwrap the parcel and expose the real source of exploitation. We can also take action against the modern day slavery of contracted workers right here in New Zealand by voting in local council elections against those who refuse to accept responsibility for their own role in generating working poverty in our community. Vote against Linda Cooper in Waitakere Ward. Vote in support of Penny Hulse and Greg Presland because they have committed to act against exploitation at Auckland Council and pay a Living Wage to directly employed and contracted workers.

You can find out more as our commitments to support a Living Wage emerge over the next weeks and are posted to www.livingwage.org,nz

The internet is liberating, it gives me choice, a chance to connect, unlimited access to information and it makes me feel powerful to know it is at my fingertips.

A variety of candidates are building their digital power base for this year’s local government elections because they want my vote. However, between Facebook and my vote there’s a yawning digital divide where the power to bring about real change evaporates.

The Living Wage Movement is going to be active in these elections. It will call for council candidates around the country to support a Living Wage so public money is spent to support healthy local communities. That call depends for its success not on a Facebook group but on social organisation, an infrastructure that enables us to act in unison for a common purpose. That’s not digital power, but power rooted in a social fabric of collectives woven together over time through conversation and joint action. Such a social fabric existed once.

In 1914 the Workers Education Association opened its NZ chapter to advance the idea that working people should have access to the learning that was only available to the moneyed privileged classes in our society.

In 1939 the Back of the Yards Neighbourhood Council was founded in Chicago alongside the meat Packinghouse Workers Union led by Saul Alinsky. That neighbourhood brought together the organisations that played the biggest part in the lives of people there: the immigrant groups, the Catholic Church and the Union.

More recently in NZ, and within many of our memories, credit unions and union health services emerged across NZ for unionised workers, alongside workingmen’s clubs, churches and schools. “We are the union, the mighty, mighty union” we chanted on hotel picket lines in the ‘80s.

These were mediating institutions that provided the infrastructure for workers and their families to cope with the challenges of daily existence; that embodied solidarity or collectivity; and, that enabled activists, in the words of sociologist C. Wright Mills, to turn “private troubles” into “public issues.”

The 1991 de-regulation of the labour market signalled a new design at work in which the market would dominate, facilitated by the state, and civil society would founder. This was an age of individualism.

The internet theoretically came to our rescue because it allowed us to turn our “private troubles” into “public issues” day after day, hour after hour and minute after minute, on Facebook and Twitter, creating the new network infrastructure in our increasingly private and insulated lives.

The only problem is that we no longer own the new infrastructure, we didn’t design it and we are not doing the work required to build, maintain, refresh or give life to it in the way we might have done in past neighbourhoods, churches and unions. The infrastructure is owned by the corporate giants, like Google and Facebook; they hold the power and we are its servants.

Critiques of Facebook and big data are common now and challenge the idea that we have a great new tool to organise mass rallies, connect in solidarity and challenge injustice. Dismembered, deconstructed, commodified, commercialised – all while we are sleeping in our beds – taking a few hours out before resuming the “work” of tapping into the corporate machine of social media with our likes, dislikes, activities, opinions – and maybe the “star” we most resemble after answering 10 key questions.

Plenty of us worry about the growth of individualism and the exploitation of workers without union rights that bring some balance to the employment relationship. Workers don’t volunteer to be exploited. They need money because they need to live, and so generally grab the work if and where they can, on the terms offered.

But the work we do for our Masters of Surveillance and Big Data is entirely voluntary, and it’s free of charge. It takes individualism to whole new levels where the fragments of our private selves (our likes, dislikes, and the “star” we resemble) are extracted and re-organised as products for use or sale to make massive profits.

We do this social media thing because we are freely connecting with people, events, and issues. There are so many people I don’t have time to keep up, so many events I am scared to look at the list, so many birthdays I am embarrassed I missed, and so many groups I didn’t ask to join but I couldn’t possibly leave. But don’t get me wrong here, I am not leaving – I am a willing victim. That is the success of the Facebook machine. Perhaps the Romantic of the future will express heroism, mystery and idealism by ending their relationship with Facebook and Big Data.

The future Romantic will dream of reversing the atomisation of our private and public selves that has made us the exploited product of social media giants. In the future Age of the Romantic we may hark back to an era in which we were social beings talking and acting together in pursuit of common goals for the common good, and where the institutions, such as unions, stepped out into civil society to share the stage in our call for shared goal, such as a Living Wage that pays the rent or supports quality education and health care. After all we all pay for low pay.

One of our Living Wage questions that brings together different classes, races and faiths in a connection that build relationships, aspiration and hope is simply; “what matters to you and your family.” It’s a whole person question, it is the person in their whole context, and it’s best asked in person.

We want our individual freedom and the powerfulness we feel as an individual on the internet but we also need the emotion inherent in the real life relationships that strengthen our social solidarity.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/07/26/must-read-turning-private-troubles-into-public-issues/feed/13Where were you when we needed you?https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/06/21/where-were-you-when-we-needed-you/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/06/21/where-were-you-when-we-needed-you/#commentsMon, 20 Jun 2016 21:05:25 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=72910

Santa Kruz Papatoetoe Parish Youth last week laid down a challenge to the Catholic Justice and Peace Commission in three simple words: ‘Where Were You?”

Where were you when there was not enough food on the table; where were you when the family was kicked out of their state house and had no where to go; where were you when mum was dragged violently by the hair by Dad?

It was actually a challenge to everyone, us out there, the world that seemed to be too busy to notice. And it was uncomfortable but it was valid, youthful anger – and a call to activism.

Who are we out there, that they can call on, join up with and rally alongside? We are called civil society, an ancient idea that reaches back to Cicero and the Romans when, as a concept, it was integral to the State. It then re-emerged as parallel but separate from the State in the 18th century Enlightenment. Civil society was a place where citizens associated according to their interests and wishes.

Now in the age of modern democracy it is a popular term that captures everything that is outside the State (inclusive of political parties) and the Market. It is not just NGOs but all that sphere – from the Right to the Left of the ideological spectrum – including those that would contest the notion of the common or public good.

A good example of a burgeoning civil society that is occurring in Western democracies everywhere is seen in the Auckland housing crisis. A five minute tally of organisations on Facebook will put you in touch with a plethora of groups: Student Housing Action Group, State House Action Network, Housing NZ Tennants Forum, Save Pensioner Housing, Save Our State House Homes, Tamaki Housing Group, Housing Call to Action (West Auckland). This doesn’t include the groups that are also involved such as the the Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists, Budget Advisory groups, the Living Wage Movement, NZEI, Waitemata Unite, and so on.

Does this array of organisations reflect a strong civil society or a dangerous weakness in our political environment? What is our ability to link together, to plan, act, and transform our communities into a force that politicians can’t resist?

The fact that there are politicians, (who are not part of civil society) mounting campaigns within civil society for housing and other screaming social needs, is testimony to our fragility and, more worryingly, our exposure to the subversion of democracy by the very same politicians who will have the power to act, or not act, as the all-powerful State when the pendulum swings their way.

As unions struggled to organise workers over the last 25 years governments de-regulated the labour market or sat back and watched organised labour fall apart. The art of civil society is to organise for the common good whereas the art of politicians is to compromise, for their own good.

The Living Wage Movement aims to connect the institutions of civil society together around their common purpose. The purpose that bound the groups together in 2012 and continues to define the Movement, is a Living Wage for working people and their families. But it is impossible to de-link wages from rent. jobs, transport, quality food or safer streets. This is the real world described by the Santa Kruz Youth.

What is then born is a broad-based movement of civil society – for the Common Good. This means the Movement is engaged in a fluid conversation but our action occurs around the concrete, winnable issues that emerge in our streets, suburbs and cities.

The 2016 elections for local government has enabled a conversation across unions, housing groups, churches, women’s organisations, community health providers and many others. Council candidates will be invited to election forums, the biggest of which will be a Mayoral and Waitemata Ward “People’s Assembly: An election special” on August 31 at St Matthew-in-the-City. Commitments will be sought on four inter-related issues: the Living Wage, housing, transport, and employment. If elected, councillors and the Mayor will be held to account.

The Santa Kruz Papatoetoe Parish Youth will join the Auckland People’s Assembly because they have a vision of a different society where the Minimum Wage does not strip their community of hope, health and happiness; where the Living Wage is a reality; and jobs, homes and public transport support decent lives.

After election day, October 8, as we celebrate or commiserate, re-organise and strategise will our new young activists ask:

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/06/21/where-were-you-when-we-needed-you/feed/6“Not one more child”https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/05/31/not-one-more-child/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/05/31/not-one-more-child/#commentsMon, 30 May 2016 21:52:54 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=72130

1000s marched in Whangarei, Auckland, Papakura, Hamilton, Rotorua, Taupo, Hawera, Whanganui and on to the deep south. It reads like a weather report as the centres of outrage at the abuse of children in our homes following the death of Moko are listed.

Between individuals empowered to stand up in Justice for Moko and the Government charged with protecting its citizenry is a chasm that any successful democracy would fill with the organisations of civil society. These are the groups, like unions and women’s refuges, designed to connect individuals with the megastructures of government and society – the organised groups through which we learn to articulate our needs, solve problems, and express our democratic views.

NZ doesn’t have a functional civil society. Unlike Europe where power is devolved through European law to the states and within many of its states to these “mediating institutions” of civil society, New Zealand devolved power and responsibility directly to individuals, bypassing civil society altogether. The individual is the beginning and end of the story. The individuals who walk down Queen Street to helplessly vent their anger and pain and the Government’s Social Development Minister Anne Tolley who deflects any responsibility back to individuals when she says “two people put their hands up to torturing a three-year old…” Lucky escape Anne Tolley!

Government in a capitalist democracy has two jobs: firstly, to enable organisations of civil society to fulfill their role helping individuals manoeuvre through life and all its challenges; and secondly, to hold the power of the market in check. It has categorically failed at both. There is no adequate support for addressing family violence (the Hastings Women’s Refuge, for example, has had their funding cut by over $36,000 over the last six years) or the poverty that places families under pressure. Tolley’s flagged greater “market” encroachment, with the possibility of the failed multinational Serco picking up social service delivery, was too idiotic to win any public support, even from her own colleagues but nevertheless exemplifies the tendency of the Government to look to business to occupy the spaces it wishes to vacate.

Far from building strong social institutions that protect individuals and their associations from “the market” or supporting individuals to access the State, the Government is nurturing social dysfunction by individualising blame and personalising responsibility. It sounds entirely reasonable, if not entirely ridiculous, for a Prime Minister to say “all I can say to people is if somebody is homeless they should go and see Work and Income.” Well, why wouldn’t that work? Where was the funding in the Budget for the advocacy services, like Auckland Action Against Poverty, that would facilitate the conversation between the powerless individual and the powerful government institution?

Disempowered social institutions, like unions, are left with little choice after 25 years of emasculation under successive governments but to seek new leverage. They must broaden their focus to explore new ways to win. On the one hand this means organising in the chasm wherein lies our fractured civil society and, on the other, directly challenging the state that has abdicated responsibility for its own citizenry. We cannot wait to be invited for a cup of tea and a chat.

The Kristine Bartlett equal pay case is a direct challenge laid down by E tū in the absence of any ability to secure decent wages for 50,000 carers responsible for some of our most vulnerable in society. The legal victory brought the Government and its agencies to the bargaining table in the hope of concluding an out-of-court settlement. All the parties accept this is the best and quickest option. Yet negotiations couldn’t be done without the unions because they are the social institutions that represent carers as a collective – you can’t invite 50,000 workers in for a cup of tea and a chat. It isn’t often that governments in this country are forced to acknowledge the role of unions and this happened only because the alternative, leaving it to a court decision, was so unpalatable. The deal will create a better country for our workforce and their families, for the elderly whose lives are inextricably linked with their carers, and for the communities that will prosper from greater money circulating in the local economies.

An empowered and connected citzenry through resourced and recognised social institutions of civil society is critical for our democracy. It is critical for real justice for Moko. As individuals emerge from their homes to cry for help in the streets, the sound reverberates from building to building, normally occupied by the megastructures of government and capital, but on Saturday empty. Our alienation from both government and market is the responsibility of this government and the answer lies not in a chat across the chasm but a reconstruction of civil society so our communities can flourish again.

]]>https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/05/31/not-one-more-child/feed/19Breaking through the silencehttps://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/05/02/breaking-through-the-silence/
https://thedailyblog.co.nz/2016/05/02/breaking-through-the-silence/#commentsSun, 01 May 2016 22:31:27 +0000http://thedailyblog.co.nz/?p=71092

Sorry WINZ I’ve had enough

Of precarious work and living it rough

And Dumpster Diving is not a career

That we should resort to with little ones to rear…

At the Auckland Housing Summit Vanessa Kururangi read a long poem about the arrogance of power and the powerlessness of the 99% where

“Sorry” makes us Invisible,

Not counted,

Not missed.

Invercargill’s Lisa Gibson described at the same summit how it was possible for a government agency responsible for state house tenants to be “purging women who are vulnerable onto the streets” as houses are emptied and land-banked. Tenants are afraid of being picked out and losing their homes, so they remain silent.

A weapon in the silencing of the majority is the fear of retribution. Last year a caregiver, Morven Hughes, was interviewed on Radio New Zealand, about her role in the care sector. Neither she nor her employer were named because of Morven’s fear of retribution. Her employer, a corporate residential care provider, recognized her Scottish accent and took steps to punish and silence her through disciplinary action; action that continues today as her union, E tū, defends her right to freedom of speech.

E tū has also defended workers employed by major cleaning contractors, such as Spotless, who threaten union members with dismissal for talking to the media or appearing in front of parliamentary select committees to talk about low pay and it is now common for employers to attempt to insert clauses into employment agreements forbidding workers to talk to the media without the employer’s permission.

Elderly residents of Selwyn Village campaigning for a Living Wage for their carers were threatened with losing their “right to occupy” if organized a petition of other residents because expressing their views about workers’ rights was against the rules. Their freedom of speech is curtailed by fear of retribution.

Government and corporate employers are powerful and their threats against the powerless beggars belief, but it is not new. Captain Waldemar Pabst in 1962 spoke of attending a meeting of Rosa Luxenburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919 where he decided to have them killed for their intellectual leadership of the revolution: “One has to decide to break the rule of law…This decision to have them both killed did not come easy to me…I do maintain that this decision is morally and theologically legitimate.”

Governments of many hues have successfully designed a system in Aotearoa where the interests of capital are nurtured and workers are legislated to the margins: individuals are isolated and easily intimidated; unions cannot bargain effectively with the funders of wages; and notions of the common good have retreated into the powerless and disconnected institutions of our civil society.

That being said around the globe there are glimmers of hope. From the 2012 Chicago Teachers Union that reached out across the community to secure adequate school funding, to the formation of Minnesotans for a Fair Economy a few months ago, networks of union, community and faith groups are reasserting a notion of the common good, a connection fundamental to power and participation that makes sense of any concept of democracy.

In Aotearoa, the Living Wage Movement is seeking this same common purpose by bringing together many institutions of civil society on a neutral shared platform from which we can raise our voices in fearless unity.

Usually we hear about the international developments after the new institutions of civil society have emerged and the temptation is to set up similar alliances, action groups, or coalitions because, well, we want that too. It makes sense to have an organisation that represents what we all share in common such as decent housing, good jobs or just wages. But action precedes organisation, for good effect, which means the conversations, and the collaborations are critical. The hard work of building power with others can’t be avoided.

UK academic, Jane Wills, describes the power of coalition in the “identity-linking” across diverse groups of civil society. The majority of working people in state housing are low paid so the problem of low wages and the problem of the sale of state houses is linked. The act of bringing organisations together on a common platform, as the Housing Summit did, reinforces our shared identities and our common purpose, where Christians, teachers, health professionals, beneficiaries, unionists and state house activists meet, agree and organise – because our community matters.

Sorry, we will call it gentrification

When you sell our State Homes

Which belong to our Nation

Pffft…”social cleansing”? – sorry, not happenin’

When it’s the heart of our communities

You’re butchering and dismantling

While bearing the mantel and authority of our institutions we have to also step outside of the institution and discover our shared identities, activate our common interests and create sustained organisation. Institutions of civil society are necessary but they quickly become gatekeepers containing the activism, passion and spirit of transformation that we need to prevent a terminal silencing of discontent.

A young paid union official presented her flag to a Living Wage activist at a recent festival asking that someone take it to future events in case she couldn’t make it herself. The standard was raised high but the bearer has departed.

Far from unique this story must resonate with many movements for change in our democracy and it is the challenge we currently face of organising through individual commitment or representation in a hollowed out civil society – gutted by under-funding and regulatory constraints; often out-manoevered by the funding agencies that have designed service contracts gagging freedom of speech in exchange for money.

Thousands of citizens, like me, try to impact on decision-makers, like Councils, all the time and yet we struggle to make them listen. Tragically, there are daily examples of this. I marched down Queen St to oppose the TPPA in the single biggest mobilisation of citizens for many years – the issue resonated across diverse communities – and yet our voices were not heard. It took extraordinarily hard work by many, social media saturation (for those on social media), well-researched argument and powerful articulate proponents opposing the treaty, and yet we got no traction with those who needed to listen and understand an issue that touched the hearts of hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders.

Influencing the government funders of wages at Auckland Council has met the same wall of resistance. Hundreds of submissions in the last two years calling for a Living Wage for directly paid and contracted workers in that Council’s never-ending cycle of meaningless consultation, have been met with silence about the importance of decent wages in plans associated with the future of the “world’s most liveable city.” Voices are being raised all across NZ but we live in a democracy where millions of dollars are invested in public consultation while decisions are made in a seemingly parallel universe behind impenetrable fortresses of bureaucracy.

E tū member Lupe Funua is an Auckland Council cleaner with a young family who says she wants to feed and clothe her family but everything is too expensive. She has the apparently sky high ambition to want to save so her children can get an education. Hers is a heartfelt plea that will fall on deaf ears. She can’t make headway earning just above the poverty minimum wage of $15.25 per hour. It is a heartfelt plea by a real worker in the real world of struggle employed by a public institution with the power to change that. Yet that institution distances itself and oversees growing inequality where now there are almost exaclty as many people on more than $100,000 per year as there are on less than a Living Wage of $19.80 per hour (1912 above; 1840 below) and where an astonishing $60,000 pay increase for the chief executive this year must somehow have been deemed reasonable. This is the same CEO, Stephen Town, who said the “ramifications” of allowing Albert Eden swimming pool attendants to be paid a Living Wage would “have untenable consequences for me as the employer of council staff.” (NZ Herald). That is somehow deemed reasonable too.

Where institutional power is so comprehensively unresponsive to the citizens, the voices of opposition must be organised and that organisation sustained. Calling our elected leaders to account takes resilience and that means grounding organisation in institutions – the institutions of civil society: workers through unions, congregations through churches and communities through the diverse groups that seek to mediate the challenges facing citizens in a modern world, such as the Migrant Action Trust and Papatuanuku Kokiri Marae.

An organised voice is not a flag without a bearer, it is not even a duly elected representative with a flag; it is the sustained commitment of an organisation to educating, leading and repeatedly mobilising large numbers of people around the issues that we all care about in the hope that the power of that collective force will enable citizens to penetrate the fortresses of our modern democratic institutions, such as Auckland Council, so Lupe, and others like her, can realise their dreams.